Interface and Interaction Design
ONE BUTTERFLY PROJECT:
SMITHSONIAN CROSS CATALOG SEARCH INTERFACE
What began as an independent study with Dr. Gary Geisler developed into the topic of my Fall2009 Master's Report. My first objective was to develop three interface designs for Smithsonian's Cross Catalog Search Center using Adobe Flash and Illustrator CS3. The Cross Catalog Searching Center (CCS) is an endeavor of Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. The CCS permits the search of descriptive records of dozens of Smithsonian units.
Seeing the Potential for Much More
I saw the CCS had potential to connect related resources across a large de-centralized institution in new ways. Currently, there are 1.7 million records in the catalog. Though the Smithsonian, like many cultural institutions, is building and refining its web presence, but they have yet to overcome the physical and technological barriers that separate their collections from the public. Right now, the best way to experience the cultural objects is to visit Washington D.C.. The Smithsonian has the essential building blocks a bridge across physical and digital repositories for people to interact with media and ultimately culture.
Research Interests
My research interests are at the digital intersection of libraries, museums and archives. As the Smithsonian is itself a microcosm of libraries, archives, museums and research centers the One Butterfly Project addressed, albeit superficially, interface design of such an intersection.
Draft Master's Report Abstract
Museums can be perceived as stuffy and forbidding; Web technologies allow museum staff to expand access to their collections and perhaps counterbalance these somewhat unfair perceptions. Museums are also looking for new ways to communicate with the public in part to make a case for their relevance in a digital information age. With the emergence of multitouch computing and popularization of user experience design museum professionals will soon be wondering how to marry users' information seeking experiences occurring on multiple computing platforms.
As a means of addressing these issues this Master's Report summarizes the One Butterfly design project. That project's goal was to create a multitouch interface for federated search of Smithsonian collections. The report describes the project's three major phases. First an idea for an interface was developed and then designs based on that idea were captured and clarified. Second, a formal review of related research was taken on to ground these designs in a tradition of museum informatics, as well as interface and interaction design literatures; Third, a evaluation of the design and the underlying idea in light of things learned in the previous phase. A discussion on future projects related to One Butterfly concludes this report.